Africa is not a fun place, you know. A fun place is somewhere that lifts the spirits, that cossets the senses. I don't think that can be said of the Africa I traveled in.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The world is always in movement.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

Specific knowledge is needed in every work, if we want to have success

A magician may step out without a purse, but he should never step out without a pack of playing cards.

There's so few people in this town with a conscience.

I'm still Elliott Yamin. I'm still the funky white Jewish boy from Richmond, Va.

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like.

I often say fame is kind of like a drug or like sugar: when it's controlling you it doesn't feel good at all.

You want calamities? What about the Ice Age? God made this world, but didn't complete it.

A company and leaders of the company have the responsibility of the precious lives of all the human beings that work there.

When I'm old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say 'wow, that was an adventure,' not 'wow, I sure felt safe.'

I say to my team all the time that this is how I grew up: Always thinking that, at any minute, I could be unemployed. You have to scramble. You have to work hard and get ahead of things.